Photo: Holger Motzkau — Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
Paul Modrich
born 1946 · United States · Born 1940 or later
Nobel Chemistry 2015
American biochemist who deciphered how cells repair mismatched DNA bases after replication.
Nobel-winning work
He elucidated the mechanism of DNA mismatch repair, identifying and reconstituting the proteins — MutS, MutL, MutH and others — that detect and correct copying errors, showing how cells keep mutation rates low.